I’ve had the pleasure of eating at Cheba Hut, Iowa City’s latest addition to an already over-saturated sandwich market, twice since it’s opening a few weeks ago. Now I consider myself more than your average sandwich consumer; I’m what you might consider a connoisseur. During high school I worked at Subway for three years, and for about a semester before studying in Germany I worked at the local Which Wich (which is by far my favorite and still the standard to beat.) I’m a frequenter of Jimmy John’s (which no one in Boston this weekend had heard of and I was all “Whaaa??”) just because their bread is so damn delicious and it’s pretty cheap for the size of the ‘wich. I can never decide whether I think Milio’s is better or not quite as good as JJ– their menus are frighteningly similar, though Milio’s wheat bread is pretty tasty when fresh, and they use actual guacamole on their veggie subs instead of the “avocado spread” Jimmy John’s uses that I’m not sure comes from actual avocados.

SO– you can imagine my excitement when Cheba Hut set up shop two weeks ago. I have to start by addressing the theme: marijuana. The ganj. Smokin’ the reefer. Never before have I seen a restaurant quite as elaborately themed (they promise their employees aren’t toasted when they’re toasting up our subs. They can’t promise the same for the customers though, who I had the pleasure of watching wait quite impatiently for their subs through half-closed, fire engine red eyes.) I think the theme’s cute ‘n all– it’s a bit much when they yell at the end, “Brittney, I’ve got your Chronic.” Ok, I get it. Haha, it’s drugs. The Bob Marley music was far too loud on my first visit, but they seemed to have corrected that by the time Roomie Lauren and I had dinner there a week later. The menu’s decent: plenty of choices– though no Which Wich– but far more appetizing than your Subways/JJ’s/Milio’s. You can choose white, wheat or garlic & herb bread. The first time I had the garlic & herb, it was too… herb-y for me. I’m sure some would I enjoy it, I just happen to like the wheat better.

There’s a sign above the toasted that says it will be a miracle if you get your sandwich in less than five minutes– they take their time toasting it, which can be good or bad, depending on how crunchy you enjoy your food. One of my friends who’s not a huge fan of toast said he thought it made the bread too dry and “bread-y”, which I kind of found with my BBQ’d roast beef & cheddar sub the first time. When your ‘wich comes outta the toaster, you can then tell the toppings person if you want lettuce, pickle, tomato & onion along with some sauces. The pickle comes in a long spear laid on your sandwich instead of slices, and the lettuce one of the times I went was chunked up iceberg (though they had completely run out of product the day before, so I don’t know if this is what they usually use or if they had to run to the store last minute.) There were only two half slices of tomato on my veggie sandwich with hemp cream cheese, though said cream cheese was deeeeelicious. You can put on your standard mayo or mustard, then they ask if you want their special “house dressing” with parmesan and oregano, from what I can tell is just oil & vinegar.

Overall, I would give Cheba Hut three out of five stars. (Apparently I just became a restaurant critic, go with it.) They get HUGE points for delivering. They also stay open until bar close, something Which Wich should definitely do, though my wallet is glad it does not. Cheba Hut’s not exactly bare bones cheap, but their sandwiches come in three different sizes– 4, 8, and 12 inches– so you can pick your poison. Who is ordering a four-inch sandwich, by the way? They won’t be my first choice when wanting a sandwich from outside my own kitchen, but the novelty of a new place still hasn’t worn off, and I look forward to trying some of their more interesting veggie subs before I hit the dusty trail after graduation.

Here I sit on yet another Sunday evening come too soon, with homework I should do but will not until mere minutes before it’s due, and a tired and sick basset hound slumbering at my feet. This weekend was par for the course in Iowa City, and now I’m playing catch up with things that actually matter because I can never seem to find the motivation to do them anytime before near midnight on Sunday. Fergus is indeed sick– he’s puked three times tonight and sounds like he’s snoring when he breathes. If he’s not better by morning I suppose it’s then to the vet we go (his six month birthday is on Wednesday!) Tonight I was on the radio for the second week in a row, something I find ridiculously self-satisfying, perhaps even more so than this Internet shrine I’ve been pounding out my thoughts on for over a year. My friends DJ a show on our campus radio station every Sunday night, and somehow I’ve been deemed trustworthy enough to man a mic and share my thoughts with the approximately 13 people listening. I’m not allowed to pick tunes, however, which if fine by me because my fellow studio rats still entertained my GNR obsession by waxing poetic on all things Slash and Axl for a solid five minutes. Danke, friends. My parents and really all family who aren’t me or my brother have descended upon Hawaii for my aunt’s nuptials on Wednesday. I am not only jealous because there’s a snowstorm imminent back here in Iowa, but I love weddings and am definitely missing out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a paper to write and many things for PRSSA to do and a work meeting at 9:30 tomorrow morning that will require me to fall asleep at a decent time.

And Rob, I sincerely hope you found your wallet.

So it’s the Friday of Homecoming weekend. I am home at 10:30 p.m., have cleaned the kitchen of the catastrophic chili mess I made earlier, and am now in my pajamas trying to drink enough water to counteract the near life threatening amount of sodium that was in the sweet potato fries I had for dinner. This sudden sober clarity got me thinking on a few points, and since this is my blog, here I go a-sharin’:

First of all, this was not exactly my preferred place to ring yet another home Hawkeye football weekend. You best believe I ventured out with friends this evening, looking kinda tranny-ish, definitely with a goal in mind of sleeping most of the day away tomorrow. However, there are so many old people here. Sorry, but I’m just putting it bluntly– the amount of Baby Boomer alumni crawling the streets is just absurd. The amount of people crammed into the bars, even the shitty ones, is even more absurd. There was no space for anyone long before 9:30 p.m., and even if there were, I wasn’t about to stand in line for half an hour every time I needed to refresh my drink.

It’s not like I needed to drink tonight. It wasn’t a close friend’s birthday, and I had neither anything to celebrate nor feel overly morose about. It’s just something that happens within the brain of 85% of the students here– it’s Friday at 4 p.m., I’m going to get hammered tonight. Sorry if I’m perpetuating any negative stereotypes of my school, but I was seriously giving this a lot of thought as I scrubbed my counters a few minutes ago: we drink because we’re Hawkeyes. We drink because of the reputation that precedes us. It is not, as some apparently suspect, because we’ve so long been able to get into bars at the age of 19. The 21 Ordinance, put into effect on June 1st of this year, is going back on the ballot for the general public to vote upon in November. There’s been a huge push on campus this week to vote early– not on how to vote, just to make sure that yours counts. I’m going to vote Yes, to strike down the ordinance. There’s plenty of signs around town urging us to “Vote Yes for Safety!” While most of these are in the windows of shops that make tons of money off our drunk asses around bar close, I do have to agree that the house party culture since the ordinance passed is far less than ideal. Personally, I’m not voting yes because I think 19 and 20 year olds have some constitutional right to be in a bar with the 21+ crowd after 10 p.m. Aside from the safety thing, I’m voting that way because some seniors voted that way when I was a freshman. We shan’t go into how my life would be different should it have gone into effect three years ago, but I shudder, cringe, and shed a tear at the thought. Quite frankly, there’s some damn good specials now, and cover is basically non-existent. I like that the bars are less crowded, but it’s the principle of the thing. The ordinance overall affects me very little, so I’m going to do my fellow underage drinker a favor, just like the former fellow underage drinker did before me.

But back to our reputation. There have been numerous campaigns in my four years on campus to curb binge drinking, perhaps one new catchy slogan every fall. This year it’s the Think Before You Drink movement. Has anyone seen any actual data that these yearly pushes to give students fun and sober alternate weekend activities is working? I’m certainly not trying to say that the amount of alcohol any given 21 year old senior consumes in a three day period at Iowa is at all healthy or something to boast about, I’m just trying to be realistic. If the president wants to really make some sort of effective change, the entire school is going to need a national, and most certainly statewide, re-branding. If the 21 Ordinance sticks, and I won’t exactly be unable to sleep at night if it does, that is the first foreseeable step, to me, in getting rid of our ridiculous drunken reputation. If we lose that stigma and essentially just become a house party central like Ames (but with more hipsters) students won’t feel the need to drink up to the blood alcohol contents of the alumni before them.

I realize I have organized my thoughts quite poorly, that I have probably often contradicted myself, and mostly just made my relatives quite concerned for my liver, wallet and waistline. I just don’t think that other college students have the same drinking culture that we do in Iowa City, certainly no one else in Iowa does, and it’s definitely something worth looking at. Perhaps I’m just that girl who can’t say no, who doesn’t realize it’s all in her control to stay in on a Friday night and not be in a stink about it. Perhaps my friends are all just a bunch of drunkards, and come May I’m in for the reality check of my life. For the record, my grades are just fine, I’m performing fabulously at both my job and internship– from the student perspective, I don’t see a problem with our campus-wide drinking habits. It’s just curious when you take a step back, as to why we have such extreme habits. That’s all.

For absolutely despising mayonnaise and being generally afraid of everything that’s completely based on saturated fats, I love chicken salad. I realize you can make it sans mayo and instead with Greek yogurt or low fat sour cream, but I’ve never gone as far as making chicken salad myself. If I did, I’m afraid I’d then be destined for a profile on TLC’s “Freaky Eaters”. The more stuff slammed (my favorite verb) into a chicken salad, the better. I’m talking celery, walnuts, cranberries– today I tried some curried chicken salad on my regular bed of greens at the River Room. I’ve never been able to take a definitive stance on curry, whether I love it or loathe it. I realize the IMU isn’t really the best indicator of Iowa City’s curry options, just like how I hope no one judges if they like sushi or not by what they’re serving up in those plastic packages here. I prefer Takanami, though you can’t beat Happy Sundays at Three Samurai in Coralville.
…completely random tangent on food is now concluded. Back to procrastinating on my 3-4 page literature review, due in an hour and a half, yet to be started.

I’m up weirdly early on a Sunday, filled with anticipation for picking up the keys to my NEW APARTMENT in a few hours. I haven’t actually seen the place– I trust Lauren and Rachael’s judgment (ooh new people to blog about)– and am itching to have my own kitchen, bed, whatever-as-long-as-it’s-not-713 in Iowa City again. Forget that I was just in Vegas less than two months ago when I tell you this, but I wanna go somewhere. Perhaps Colorado to visit D-Bag, or the Caribbean, or Vermont. That last one was only because I’ve never been there, but I imagine it’s nice. Class starts in three weeks, I am quite ambivalent about this, though the mighty job/ internship hunt is ON for the school year. A little part of me dies each time I see NO next to “Is this a paid internship?” on the UI’s Employment Expo (best. invention. ever.) but I’ve accepted that I will probably have to have a paying job not related to my major and then an unpaid internship on the side. And if this all could not take up any time on Saturdays during the months of September and October, that would be ideal; we’ve got some mighty tailgating plans this year. Oh, I ran almost eight miles yesterday. Pretty freakin’ ecstatic with myself. I’m hoping everyone else is town is too hungover to move in right away as I plan on doing– parents in IC, illegal parking, unloading heavy furniture, spider webs in my storage unit all give me unnecessary anxiety. I’m wearing a lovely pair of jorts for the move, be jealous.